Mayors and councils of communities across Canada will not tolerate any stalling when it comes to getting older, hazardous rail cars off the tracks.

That's the message from Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) president Claude Dauphin, who is part of a growing chorus of voices demanding immediate changes to the thousands of DOT-111 tank cars currently hauling crude oil on the North American rail network.

Numerous studies have indicated these cars — the type involved in July's fiery explosion at Lac Megantic, Quebec — are more likely to rupture in a derailment.

So far, however — in spite of warnings from U.S. and Canadian safety officials and pressure from railway companies — the federal government has not moved to prevent their use. And because the DOT-111s are central to North America's crude-by-rail business and comprise 70 per cent of all tank cars in use, some experts — including the Railway Supply Institute, which represents North American rail suppliers — have predicted it could take 10 years to remove them all through a retirement or retrofit program.

That time frame is "unacceptable," Dauphin said.

"If they (the federal government) gave a time frame of a couple of years maximum, I think that would be reasonable," he said. "With all the attention from our Canadian citizens on that — all the concerns of my colleagues and mayors — politically speaking, it has to be very quickly."

Rail safety has been a hot-button issue in North America for the past six months, ever since the Lac Megantic disaster that killed 47 people and forever altered life in the small holiday town.

The tragedy also shattered public complacency about the ever-growing volumes of crude oil that travel daily on North American rail lines, driven largely by booming U.S. production of shale oil as well as a pipeline bottleneck that has been forcing oil companies to seek alternative routes to market.

According to Statistics Canada, in 2011, about 68,000 carloads of fuel oils and crude petroleum moved along Canadian rail lines. In 2012, that rose to nearly 113,000. Between January and September of 2013, some 118,000 carloads had already been moved.

The Association of American Railroads estimates 400,000 crude carloads will move in the U.S. in 2013, up from 234,000 in 2012 and just 9,500 in 2008.

Rail industry associations say their products safely get to their destination more than 99 per cent of the time. In fact, rail's safety record is continually improving — since 2002, for example, Canadian National Railway's main-track accidents have declined by more than 50 per cent despite rising freight volumes.

But the growing volume of oil shipments also heightens the risk of a spill. In the past year, there have been at least 10 crude oil spills in the United States and Canada as a result of rail accidents — including a derailment in New Brunswick in November and another near the hamlet of Gainford, Alta., in October.

For shipments coming out of the Bakken formation in North Dakota, there is a heightened danger. Experts say the same qualities that make this type of light, sweet crude attractive to companies also make it more flammable than traditional heavy crude — and more likely to ignite during an explosion. The Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway train that derailed in Lac Megantic was carrying Bakken oil.

In the days following the Lac Megantic disaster, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities formed a working group to lobby for improved rail safety. The Canadian government also moved quickly to implement changes — one-person crews for locomotives pulling train cars with dangerous goods were banned, new restrictions were put in place for unattended trains, and minimum braking system requirements were put in place.

Additional new rules were put in place in November, when Transportation Minister Lisa Raitt ordered Class 1 railway companies that transport dangerous goods to provide municipalities with detailed information about their loads every three months. The move was a victory for FCM, Dauphin said, as was news the government plans to increase the financial responsibility of railways for spills.

Still, no decisions have been made on the future of the controversial DOT-111 train cars — though in January, Canadian Transportation Safety Board chair Wendy Tadros warned that "a long and gradual phase-out of older-model cars simply isn't good enough." Together with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the TSB called for "immediate action" on unsafe rail cars.

A DOT-111 rail car being used to ship crude oil from North Dakota's Bakken region

Raitt has said Ottawa is "reviewing" the TSB recommendations. The Transport Minister must formally respond to the TSB report before the end of April.

In the meantime, some companies aren't waiting for a federal directive before taking action. Saint John-based Irving Oil announced it will remove older cars from its fleet. And both Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway have stated they will implement a safety surcharge for customers using the older model cars.

The railways are on board because they bear the brunt of bad publicity in the event of an accident — even though for the most part, they don't own the cars they transport and under law cannot refuse to haul them as long as they meet federal standards.

Experts have estimated the cost of retrofitting tank cars at anywhere from $20,000 to $70,000 each. Of the 228,000 DOT-111s in service in North America, about 92,000 are used to carry flammable liquids and 14,000 of those are new, stronger cars built after October 2011. That means there are about 72,000 cars that would have to be retrofitted.

New York-based transportation analyst Anthony Hatch said he thinks it could be done within two to three years of a government order.

"It would mean some disruption to the supply chain, but not permanent, and hopefully higher safety levels and public reassurance," Hatch said in an e-mail.

But David Pryce, vice-president of operations for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), sounded a note of caution.

While he emphasized the energy industry wants its products to reach their destination safely, he said producers favour "practical" steps. While he did not say what kind of time frame would be feasible, he said the pace of implementation of new standards needs to be aligned with the capacity to construct or retrofit any new or existing rail cars.

"Given the increasing importance of rail as a transportation option for oil and natural gas, we also look to governments to ensure the implementation of safety standards interrupts service as little as possible and that transporting our products by rail remains a competitive transportation option," Pryce said in an emailed statement.

Calgary-based Cenovus Energy Inc. expects to increase its oil-by-rail capacity from 10,000 barrels per day to more than 30,000 barrels per day by the end of 2014. The company will be taking delivery of more than 1,000 additional leased tank cars by the end of the year, though these will all be coiled and insulated cars appropriate for hauling oilsands product and not general purpose DOT-111s.

Company spokeswoman Jessica Wilkinson said Cenovus will leave the issue of appropriate regulations up to Transport Canada, and will commit to meeting or exceeding whatever regulations are put in place.

"We support smart regulations that will help ensure the health and safety of the public and the workers responsible for the cars, while making it both economic and efficient to move products using rail," she said.

However, in regulatory documents filed last week, Cenovus Energy listed new regulations as a risk factor and said additional rules on rail safety "could adversely affect our ability to ship crude oil by rail or the economics associated with rail transportation."

The U.S. Department of Transportation issued an Emergency Order February 25 prohibiting the transportation of crude oil in the lowest-strength packing group.

For his part, Dauphin said he is pleased with the progress Ottawa has made so far. But he said Canadian municipalities will keep pushing until they receive the commitments they're looking for.

He said only a significant strengthening of existing rail safety regulations will help residents of communities along rail lines sleep soundly at night.

"I think they feel, our citizens, that we're working on it, that the government is working on it — but they're still waiting for a solution," Dauphin said. "They want action. We've done a lot, but we still have a lot to do."

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